


The Build Up

by WhyAreThePencilsFreaky



Category: El Filibusterismo, Noli Me Tangere & Related Works - José Rizal, The Reign of Greed
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, Drama & Romance, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-02-20 03:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2412545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyAreThePencilsFreaky/pseuds/WhyAreThePencilsFreaky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dead! Dead without my having seen her, dead without knowing that I lived for her—dead!”</p>
<p>In another universe, Maria Clara might have survived the wait. This is the speculation as to what would have happened in that other universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> An edit of a fan fic I had originally posted on FFnet, but no major edits were made.

_“It’s a lie!” roared Simoun, pale and beside himself. “It’s false! Maria Clara lives, Maria Clara must live! It’s a cowardly excuse! She’s not dead, and this night I’ll free her or tomorrow you die!”_

 

* * *

 

“And who might that be?”

The Spaniard nodded in the direction of a long-haired stranger whose eyes were framed in tinted spectacles as he wove through the crowd. He was wiry and slipped in the cracks between the prominent members of society, not unlike a spider would.

The Spaniard’s female companion turned to see. “Ah, he’s a real character,” she began, “An American jeweler who apparently just returned from Asia.”

“And his name?”

“Simoun.”

“And his company?”

The woman’s eyes creased upon seeing the lady at Simoun’s arm, whose Oriental blue-green collar made a remarkable contrast with his Western, reddish ensemble. While Simoun’s hair was lined with white, hers was black all over. And for all this, the Spaniard’s companion found her unfamiliar.

“I don’t know who she is,” was all she whispered.

 

* * *

The curtains waved slightly in the cold air. The windows were opened only a crack so as to let in a silver strip of moonlight cut into the room. Outside, the European city was aglow, but Simoun fancied himself a man of darkness even after a youth lived under a sun.

“Crisostomo…,” it was a sigh, tired and cautious, that called out to a forgotten name for help as it tried to blindly grip through the shadow.

Simoun replied with all sorts of endearment: _sinta_ , _amor_ , _Cherie_ , and finally, simply, _Maria_ , as he rushed to her side on the bed. Thin as a bird she was, draped in a nightgown she had possessed since the convent. He was careful to embrace her because in his head she was still a ghost, and in his hands she was something fragile that would break if he was not careful. And yet it remained that she was much more than that.

“I'm sorry,” she said, suddenly.

He knelt at the foot of the bed closest to her side, encasing her face and shoulders with caution. “Whatever for, love?”

“I shouldn’t have called you by that.”

He shook his head and reassured her. “You can call me anything you wish.”

He felt her hands. They were cold. “I know how it feels to remember things,” she said with a shaking voice.

“Shh, no need for that now,” he whispered.

“Please, forgive me…”

Simoun took her face and kissed her forehead, her eyes, her tears. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

He had waited so long to hold her again; his sleeves were wet with her tears, and she trembled in his arms, but here she was, alive and with him. It was almost surreal that he was doing so, and letting go was not something he was planning on doing – no, not for a while.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't been a very good author and actually forgot to update this for a very, very long time. But here is the next chapter for those of you who liked the first one.

He was hunched over the desk, absentmindedly scribbling as the lamplight flickered to the wind and sent shadows sputtering across his chiseled, weary face and the depths of the dimness of the dismal little flat.

He looked up, dark eyes straining for rest. His hand involuntarily reached up and slipped off his spectacles. Then they darted toward her portrait almost immediately – the one he had kept on his old table at his former home and had taken for remembrance before he fled.

He knew he needed so much more than just her memory. In fact, he despised it at first, trying to burn it out of his mind: the pains of having to remember her with every waking hour. He wished to stop thinking about her altogether, but to no avail. She was staying. Or at least, the ghost of her, her countenance emblazoned in his head like the branding iron heated in the fire his house had burned down with. The eyes he knew so well were the same ones that threw his soul back into his body almost every night - awake, crying, haunted, and in a cold sweat.

Now the stare of the portrait dissolved into him now a plea, a call out to him as sad as the song she sang that happy, careless day they rowed across the lake. Rescue her, it told him, from the sorrows of the world and its morose silence, as heavy as a yoke while the bricks of her cruel convent weigh upon her, not the succor of God but like the earth upon Atlas.

He gazed at that picture for a long time, not looking away to shake himself out of it. The light wavered weakly again, and again the gloom danced around her face for a split second and he thought he saw it move – a laugh, a smile, or a spark? It was too quick to tell – and when it wouldn’t happen again for him he had the overwhelming feeling that he would do anything to get it back.

“This is for her,” he whispered to himself. “It always was.”

“Are you sure about this, sir?” Basilio looked up at the jeweler, whose eyes were still obscured under the night-blue of his glasses. His voice shook up Simoun’s thoughts, but he did not reply.

“Sir,” Basilio repeated, only louder.

To hell with the revolution, Simoun mused, reminded suddenly why he was even here. He only nodded to Basilio, not taking his gaze away from the building in front of him – tall and officious, a jeering hypocrite under its mask of celibate habits, just like the friars who dwelt within.

To hell with the revolution, he thought again. When he saved her at last from the claws of the convent they would flee the country, and what was freedom? What to him was this godforsaken motherland of his that had failed him time and again? The country left nothing but a bitter taste in his mouth. To hell with the revolution, to hell with patriotism, to hell with his land, to hell with everything.

He had his love, so what was there to do but leave them all behind? Nothing mattered anymore for him here. This is for her. It always was.

He took a step forward from the shadow of the building they hid under; Basilio did not dare touch him.

Slowly and deliberately, he raised his arm, and on its end was a pistol, cocked and ready. Simoun breathed once, long and deep, and stared hard at the brick imposition in front of him. And,

BANG.

His arm shook. Revolutionaries zipped past him, shouting with a cocktail of adrenaline and patriotism in their veins. All around the city at night came alive with the sounds of raging men and guns. Simoun came to and ran, faster than any of them, and Basilio, who emerged from the shadows after the shot, watched as the jeweler rushed forward into the convent.


	3. Chapter 3

Sister Maria sighed as she looked out her window. It was quiet tonight: nothing but the cold night air and the white night noise. The lamplight sputtered beside her in its aberrant dance. The windows were shut, as was on most of her nights.

She learned early in her days at Santa Clara that there was as much hope being out there, free once again, as there was the sun coming out in the middle of the night. Death was more preferable now that she knew he was no longer around to take her away to be with him. She learned to be callous to the sheer chill of her surroundings; to the throbbing pain that penetrated her mind, a memory as cold and pointed as a knife, as much as it howled on her skin like wounds fresh from flogging.

What was so special about tonight that she wished someone would take her away? Maybe, she thought long before, maybe the convent wouldn’t be this unpleasant. Maybe God would have enough mercy to spare her from the hurt she didn’t anticipate, and give her something: a sign. A plague.

But tonight, there was no God to hear her out. She lived in a convent, under an oath of silence, wrapped up in a habit that she never could stop weeping in since she first wore it. Tonight, no one could hear her prayer.

BANG.

The clean, blunt cry of a gunshot echoed nearby, and made her jump. Then, shouts – first the deep, choral tones of hundreds of men; then, the high-pitched murmur of her panicking sisters.

Instinctively, she reached under her bed, pulled out a _bayong_ with all the belongings she took neatly stuffed inside, and slipped out of her room and the residential corridor.

She wove through the halls and staircases, memorized from the years, and slipped through them thin as a bird.

For the first time, exhilaration filled her body and she hurried down the steps, not hesitating on this sign. The shouts of the other madres trying to organize themselves under the mounting chaos couldn’t pull her back. Instead she felt as if they pushed her forward, down into the base of Santa Clara and out the back door. She ignored them even as they called out her name.

She had almost reached the lobby when someone obstructed her: a tall, austere figure clothed neck to feet in black. He gazed down at her with old, bespectacled eyes with a gaze so menacing and hungry and serpentine. She looked back at them with surprise and fear, slowly dissolving into hatred and hardness that she felt boiled up within her only now, when she felt power over herself at the same time.

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Padre Salvi.

She didn’t reply.

“You cannot possibly think of leaving the convent now,” he continued. “There are riots happening outside as we speak.”

Again, she was silent.

“Poor, vulnerable Sister Maria,” he clicked his tongue. “Come with me. You aren’t safe here.”

He raised a hand to her face, but before it could make any contact with her cheek she swatted it away angrily. Then Maria stepped forward defiantly to avoid him.

Padre Salvi’s eyes, from their deceptively reassuring state, suddenly bared an anger that skimmed down his arms and closed his hand around Maria’s wrist and began to pull at it harshly.

“You will come with me, Sister Maria,” he hissed.

“Never again!” Maria spat, livid and irrepressible. Her hand was growing red, but she was numb to it.

“The little bitch finally bites!” Salvi sneered. He only pulled harder.

She tried frantically to pry herself free, but he was still stronger than she was. She dropped her _bayong_ to use her other hand, and her eyes snapped shut. She only jumped when she heard another gunshot, then a shout and the grip at her wrist falling with the body it was attached to.

Maria opened her eyes to see the priest keeling over in pain, dark drops of blood coloring the ground he stood upon.

She barely had time to regain her senses when she felt a weight fall upon her shoulder – the warm clutch of a hand. “Come with me,” said the voice it belonged to, and she trusted it enough to take the hand.

Across the fiery battlefield at the front of the convent, among the men who shot guns and the beginning entry of the _guardia civil_ , the uniforms and the tattered array – in the anarchy, it was all the same. She followed where the man took her; she didn’t even notice that he was holding her _bayong_ under his arm until only now.

They ran as fast as they could away from the chaos and into a back alley, where a calesa waited with no driver. The stranger hurriedly disconnected the horse from it, and she climbed onto the horse with his help, catching her breath at the same time, while the realization came to her only now: she was out of the convent and, finally, free.

The stranger mounted too, and she didn’t even get a good look at his face when he took the horse’s reins and commanded it forward. Maria clutched him at the waist, the _bayong_ pinned in between. She felt his initial shudder before the horse trotted faster and faster through the alleyways, and far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bayong - A handwoven bag made from palm leaves


	4. Chapter 4

“I didn’t have the chance to thank you yet.”

Her voice rang through his consciousness, making him look up at the figure dressed in white standing in front of him. No, he reminded himself for the nth time, it wasn’t a dream.

Simoun stood in the flat, solid as stone; everything about this was very much real. The way the light skimmed delicately over her marble-like, familiar face was all too vivid, all too warm to be one of the visions that interrupted his evenings.

He snapped out of his reverie, feeling an alien thumping within his chest that ached and at the same time pulled at the corners of his lips into an equally alien smile. The beat grew faster as he stumbled for speech. His mouth was a word-shaping mess.

“It’s alright,” was all he could say. It was then, looking at her straight in the eye, that he realized her gaze was alien as well. The way she looked at him then was not of recognition. It was of a novel gratefulness and shy naiveté. He wondered aloud, “You don’t recognize me.”

She shrugged earnestly. “I don’t remember ever meeting you, señor.”

His eyes trailed to the floor. _What is all this for if she no longer remembers me? She thinks I am dead. How long do I have to wait until she loves me again? ___

__Deep in thought, he didn’t see her making her way towards him. He only saw Maria’s dark brown eyes set upon him when she was close to him, timid but still looking him over for any trace of acquaintance. “You look familiar, though,” she said._ _

__Her white hand rose up, but she hesitated to touch him. Wordlessly, Simoun took it and led it to his brow, where she pulled away the strands of hair that fell across his dark forehead. When she laid another hand on his cheek, he couldn’t help but close his eyes._ _

__But when he felt the temples of his spectacles slip gently from behind his ears, his hand instinctively raised up to keep them. Then he stopped himself and pulled them off reassuringly himself._ _

__She saw neither cold nor blind eyes, but dark ones like hers, and deep with age. Maria could feel them pleading and begging, and the memories that surged back: that day on the _azotea_ when neither of them had seen each other for more than a year, and here he was, educated and clad in all his European attire; seeing him alive after the boatman saved him from drowning; the sadness and desperation when all of that had been ripped apart._ _

__The tears began to stream down her cheeks and she kissed him once and finally. Her whole body shook with so much poignancy she felt like screaming._ _

___I thought you were dead!_ _ _

___I thought I was never going to see you again!_ _ _

___Why have you come for me only now!_ _ _

__There were so many things that she wished she could throw at him that she had saved up in thirteen years, waiting for someone she knew would never come. But she only held him tight, so tight that she never wanted to let go and crying so hard that she felt like breaking._ _

__When they pulled apart, breathless and shaking, he whispered and cut the sorrowful silence. “I love you.”_ _

__She wanted to murmur it back, but it only came out a wrenching sob. He shushed her gently and held her back, and it was like this for a long while._ _


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Finally done rewriting. Thanks for reading, folks! Hope you enjoyed. :)

She woke up to see his figure hunched under the glaringly cold light of the moon streaming in through the open windows. He left them so for her, even if she assured him that she had gotten used to his shadowed nights. One hand was pressed to his temples. Maria lay down, watching for a while, before she saw his shoulders shudder and his breath break.

She sat up and laid her hand on his shoulder, startling him. She took one of his hands in both of hers and asked, “Dream?”

Simoun turned to her, eyes wet although he tried to smile. “Not a pleasant one.”

He fell into her when she held herself out for him, sobbing shamelessly as a child. She clutched him tightly and he dug his head deeper into her neck. After a time, he surfaced, brushing his tears into the sleeve of his night-shirt and looking endearingly at her, so strong and wizened now although she thought she had done so much wrong. In truth, he had done so much more wrong than she ever could.

They smiled and he leaned his forehead upon hers, where they stayed until they thought it was time to lie down again.


End file.
